The Henson Journals

[151]

Thursday, March 6th, 1930.

Rawlinson came to see me about the Vicarage at Sadberge. I undertook to write both to the Patron (the Bishop of Manchester) and to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

Mr Hibbs, the assistant curate of Winlaton, came to lunch. He expounded to me the measure and manner of his conscientious law–breaking, & as neither seemed extravagant, I indicated my acquiescence!

Pattinson and I motored to Easington Colliery, where we arrived some minutes after time, having been held up at Shincliffe by misbehaviour on the part of the car. I confirmed about 80 persons from the parishes of Easington, Easington Colliery, Horden, & Hawthorne. The new church was well filled: everybody was attentive, & the candidates looked sincere.

[ I found the concluding volume of Mackinnon's "Luther and the Reformation" extremely interesting, though it does not present the German Reformer in an amiable light. He had a certain magnanimity which may be set in the scale against his brutal egotism. "He received and would take nothing for his works. He would not, he said, sell the grace that God had vouchsafed to him. He gave away out of his slender resources with the left hand as well as the right." ]

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